The Cellar - China: Economic growth, environmental destruction

This goes back to my comments about carbon chits and the pass that countries like China and India get when it comes to pollution in their efforts to modernize their economies and social systems. In the same breath they, emerging markets, want us to spend billions to clean up our environment.

China: Economic growth, environmental destruction
POSTED: 0625 GMT (1425 HKT), June 6, 2007
CNN) -- This week the Chinese government unveiled its long-anticipated blueprint for tackling climate change and atmospheric pollution.

The 62-page action plan, issued ahead of the forthcoming G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, and in the face of growing international pressure to set concrete targets for controlling greenhouse gas emissions, openly acknowledged the scale of China's pollution problem

It reaffirmed Beijing's aim of cutting energy use by a fifth before 2010, and of doubling its reliance on renewable energy sources such as wind, hydro and nuclear power by 2020.

At the same time, however, it refused to set binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions, emphasizing that it was down to the world's major industrialized nations to take the lead in tackling a problem for which historically they bore the burden of blame ("unshirkable responsibility" as the report termed it.)

More significantly for a country that still relies on coal for 70 percent of its energy requirements, Beijing insisted that economic development must remain higher on its priority list than environmental protection.

"The first and overriding priorities of developing countries are sustainable development and poverty eradication," declared Ma Kai, chairman of China's National Development and Reform Commission, which produced the plan.

"Climate change is an environmental issue, but also a development issue. The international community should respect the developing countries' right to develop."

So just how serious is the pollution problem in China? And, despite its avowed good intentions, just how serious is the Chinese government about actually tackling that problem?

continues:
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/sci...a.environment/